I.—The Wardle Family
Here is a very pleasing and natural group of persons, in whom it is impossible not to take a deep interest. They are like some amiable family that we have known. Old Wardle, as he is called, though he was under fifty, was a widower, and had remained so, quite content with his daughters’ attachment. He had his worthy old mother to live with him, to whom he was most dutiful, tolerant, and affectionate. These two points recommend him. There was no better son than Boz himself, so he could appreciate these things. The sketch is interesting as a picture of the patriarchal system that obtained in the country districts, all the family forming one household, as in France. For here we have Wardle, his mother, and his sister, together with his two pleasing daughters, while, later on, his sons-in-law established themselves close by. The “poor relations” seem to have been always there. It is astonishing how Boz, in his short career, could have observed and noticed these things. Wardle’s fondness for his daughters is really charming, and displayed without affectation. He connected them with the image of his lost wife. There is no more natural, truly affecting passage than his display of fretfulness when he got some inkling that his second daughter was about to make a rather improvident marriage with young Snodgrass. The first had followed her inclinations in wedding Trundle—a not very good match—but he did not lose her as the pair lived beside
him. He thought Emily, however, a pretty girl who ought to do better, and he had his eye on “a young gentleman in the neighbourhood”—and for some four or five months past he had been pressing her to receive his addresses favourably. This was clearly a good match. Not that he would unduly press her, but “if she could, for I would never force a young girl’s inclinations.” He never thought, he says, that the Snodgrass business was serious. But, how natural that, when Arabella, their friend, had become a regular heroine and had gone off with her Winkle, that this should fill Emily’s head with similar thoughts, and set the pair on thinking that they were persecuted, &c. What a natural scene is this between father and daughter.
“My daughter Bella, Emily having gone to bed with a headache after she had read Arabella’s letter to me, sat herself down by my side the other evening, and began to talk over this marriage affair. “Well, pa,” she says; “what do you think of it?” “Why, my dear,” I said; “I suppose it’s all very well; I hope it’s for the best.” I answered in this way because I was sitting before the fire at the time, drinking my grog rather thoughtfully, and I knew my throwing in an undecided word now and then would induce her to continue talking. Both my girls are pictures of their dear mother, and as I grow old I like to sit with only them by me; for their voices and looks carry me back to the happiest period of my life, and make me, for the moment, as young as I used to be then, though not quite so light-hearted. “It’s quite a marriage of affection, pa,” said Bella, after a short silence. “Yes, my dear,” said I; “but such marriages do not always turn out the happiest.” “I am sorry to hear you express your opinion against marriages of affection, pa,” said Bella, colouring a little. “I was wrong; I ought not to have said so, my dear, either,” said I patting her cheek as kindly as a rough old fellow like me could do it, “for your mother’s was one and so was yours.” “It’s not that, I meant, pa,” said Bella. “The fact is, pa, I wanted to speak to you about Emily.” The long and the short of it is, then, that Bella at last mustered up courage to tell me that Emily was unhappy; that she and your young friend Snodgrass had been in constant correspondence and communication ever since last Christmas; that she had very dutifully made up her mind to run away with him, in laudable imitation of her old friend and schoolfellow.
Another member of this pleasant household was “The Fat Boy.” There is nothing humorous or farcical in the mere physical exhibition of a fat person, quâ his fat. It was, indeed, the fashion of the day—and on the stage particularly—to assume that fatness was associated with something comic. There are a number of stout persons in Pickwick—the hero himself, Tupman, old Weller, and all the coachmen, the turnkeys, Slammer, Wardle, Fat Boy, Nupkin’s
cook, Grummer, Buzfuz, Mrs. Weller, Mr. Bagman’s uncle, and others. Thackeray attempted to work with this element in the case of Jos Sedley, and his fatness had a very close connection with his character. But, in the case of Boz, his aim was much more intellectual and, as it were, refined. For his object was to show what was a fat person’s view of this world, as seen through the medium of Fat. The Fat Boy is not a selfish, sensual being by nature—he is really helpless, and the creature of necessity who is forced by his bulk to take a certain fat view of everything round him.” If we reflect on it we shall see how clearly this is carried out. It is curious that, in the instance of the Fat Boy, Boz should have repeated or duplicated a situation, and yet contrived to impart such varied treatment, but I suspect no one has ever noticed the point. Joe, it will be remembered, witnessed the proceedings in the arbour, when Mr. Tupman declared his passion for the spinster aunt, and the subsequent embracing—to the great embarrassment of the pair. At the close of the story he also intruded on another happy pair—Mr. Snodgrass and his inamorata—at a similar delicate moment. Yet in the treatment, how different—“I wants to make yer flesh creep!”—his taking the old lady into confidence; and then he was pronounced by his master, Wardle, to be under some delusion—“let me at him”—&c., so his story and report led him into a scrape. When he intruded on the pair at Osborne’s Hotel, and Snodgrass was, later, shut up there, again he was made the scapegoat, and Wardle insisted that he was drunk, &c. So here were the incidents repeating themselves.